


Where the Path Led

by Wix



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Healing, Introspection, Moving On, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reminiscing, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wix/pseuds/Wix
Summary: Where they started, was not where they ended up. So many other paths that could have been taken, where did this one go wrong?
Relationships: Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Comments: 49
Kudos: 1215
Collections: Tony Stark Defense Squad I





	Where the Path Led

**Author's Note:**

> Had some free time and was looking over old unfinished starts and decided to finish this one up. Hope you enjoy!

He wakes up in a hospital room in New York. To the soft beeping and florescent lights and the red rimmed eyes of Happy and Pepper. He lies there in the softly light space, once they’ve been escorted out of the room and stares at the ceiling. One can only count the ceiling tiles so many times before necessity demands that he take stock of what led him here.

Tony’s had many falls in his life. Each one feels like he falls further and further down each time he thinks he’s risen high enough to avoid it. What is the adage? The bigger they are the harder they fall? For Tony it’s more like the higher he goes, the longer it takes to hit the ground.

First it was revolutionizing Stark Industries, making it into something that eclipsed an old drunk who didn’t know how to be a father. Then it was the inevitable moment of clarity of Afghanistan.

Then it was the first Iron Man armor, and the power to fight back…and then it was the loss of the man who held his hand and helped him believe in himself long enough to get there.

Then it was trying to reframe the future and the story that his legacy would have, and to learn that the biggest snakes were already inside the house. Obadiah’s betrayal is something that still burns under his skin even after all of this time.

Then it was SHIELD, and Iron Man and the Avengers and dying and not dying and nightmares and pushing and pushing and _pushing_ so desperately to prevent a catastrophe only to have someone dig their claws into his brain and make it happen. Then it was the separation and the lies, so many _lies_ , and now here he was. Reminiscing on his biggest mistakes.

If he were being completely honest with himself, then Tony would have to admit that it had taken less than a week for the honeymoon period of the newly created ‘Avengers’ to wear off, and for the cracks to start showing. He would have to acknowledge that once upon a time, the Avengers Initiative was this bright and beautiful thing that he had so much hope for and poured so much of his heart into, this thing that he had tied so many of his dreams and trust into the core fabric of it…only to watch it slowly fray and unravel no matter how hard he tried to patch it. Eventually leaving behind this kind of gaping, patchwork Eldritch horror that only brought suffering, chaos and pain to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in its wake.

As with most things, the beginning of the end didn’t come from the big things, but from the little ones. The tiny snapshots of moments that built and built and eventually became too heavy for the weak foundation that they had erected to hold it all.

It had all started with the ‘disagreements’. That’s what Steve demanded that they call them. ‘Disagreements’ and not arguments, no matter how heated or spiteful they got. At first, those ‘disagreements’ had seemed harmless. Something that could be seen as the cost of doing business. Easy things like ‘don’t put coffee grounds in the sink’ or ‘stop spray painting over where you _think_ JARVIS’s cameras are’ to ‘stop marking all of the food the shoppers bring in with names. It’s a communal fridge for a reason and no I do not have to apologize for eating something with your name on it when I bought it’ and it grows and turns down the pathway that leads to ‘disagreements’ that are ‘SI is separate from the Avengers so you need to keep your hands off of confidential information or we’re going to have a problem’ and ‘we’re a group and we should show up to these events as a group, it shouldn’t just be me going because what makes you think I want to play the performing monkey anymore than you do?’ and ‘I don’t have the time to take these drawings and turn them into workable items because I have to actually maintain the SI development workload, no I don’t just hide down in the lab and _tinker_ ’.

It grows from there though, as all weeds tend to. So many forks in the road and they seem to always take the worst one and just storm straight ahead without any care for the damage they’re leaving behind them. Arguments that continue to get mislabeled and swept under the rug as just the cost of living with new roommates, and due to some of them not knowing how to share their space. Which is funny, because they always seemed to look at Tony even though they use the word ‘we’, and very quickly those actions and comments grew into a set of behaviors and beliefs that Tony very quickly decides he does not appreciate. Mostly because he finds it odd. He’s never had these supposed ‘issues’ any other time in his life when he’s roomed with others. Namely with Rhodey back in college or when Happy moved in back when he first got the job and wanted to show how serious he was about it, or that time when Pepper lived with him for several weeks because the pipes burst at her place. Tony’s great at sharing his space with others despite certain people’s assumptions about it, he just wants to know where his space is allowed to be when they keep overtaking all of it and leaving no area for him.

It’s around that time that things got a little more…personal. When the arguments touched on a kind of belief that was rampant in the Avengers Tower that Tony tries to pretend for the sake of ‘team dynamics’ that he doesn’t know that the others are harboring towards him. Beliefs like: Pepper is the one who _actually_ runs SI in spite of Tony, the poor woman; Tony Stark is an actual man-child who needs to be supervised at all times and can’t be expected to behave like an adult so don’t even try; to Tony doesn’t know how to function like a human being how has he lived so long without the Avengers there to make sure that he eats/sleeps/wipes his ass after using the restroom?

Thinking back on it, Tony thinks that’s around the time that those cracks went from tiny little hairline fractures to full on damage. Deep, shattering, needed to reset the bone – damage. That’s also around the time that the secondary lineup of ‘disagreements’ really got into full bloom. The arguments about money, about time, about public relations, about duties, about what the future of the Avengers looked like, about restrictions and rules and about…well really about _anything_ that they tried to talk about. There never seemed to be a time that they could find consensus. Or at least, if they ever did it was only to bind together against Tony and throw all those issues at his feet to deal with. ‘If he’s so worried about it’ and if ‘it’s going to bother him so much’ or ‘if it’s about money then he’s got so much of it that they’ll leave it to him’ becoming the new ways that all of the arguments end and Tony thinks that’s when the coin really started to flip.

Looking at it now, lying here in this bed, he can see the beginning of the end. The end started when Tony stopped bringing up events for the others to go to with him, uninterested in the pointless battle that he never won. It started when he stopped bringing up the damage tolls at dinners, those same dinners that he eventually stopped finding time to come to and they never questioned why he wasn’t there.

So of course, naturally, _that_ blows up in his face as well when all of a sudden they’re demanding to know why Tony didn’t tell them about the Ultron program or why he was ‘stupid enough to allow this to happen’ when it came to the unforeseeable events of Sokovia and Ultron. Tony tries to tell them around a sore throat that will bare the shadows of Thor’s fingerprints later, that he’s begged and pleaded with them to listen to him before now, and still all they do is roll their eyes and Tony finds himself wondering if Ultron really was all that far off when it came to what he said about the Avengers.

Wanda’s inclusion to the team is just a slap in the face that shakes him to his core. The Sokovian native should be on trial for crimes against humanity and mass murder, having actively worked with both Hydra and Ultron willingly, yet somehow she becomes the Avengers little pet project and Tony _hates_ it. The rest of the world hates it too, but the Avengers have become too comfortable behind their gilded walls of Tony’s making that they don’t _listen_. That doesn’t mean that Tony doesn’t hear the whispers. Whispers of unchecked power and fear, and as per usual the Avengers don’t listen to him when he tries to warn them. Instead they lay the blame of Ultron and everything at his feet and plug their ears while all but singing Hosannas to Wanda and honestly Tony didn’t really have it in himself to be surprised anymore when it happened. Why should he be? They didn’t pay attention when he told them to issue an apology after DC. They didn’t listen when he said to not send just Natasha into that meeting with Capitol Hill, and they sure as hell didn’t listen when he tried to coach Natasha into what to say in front of the cameras making it to where he was just shaking his head when he saw the words that eventually left her smirking lips.

So there’s something to be said when all of the Avengers shift over to the Compound, walking around those hallways and Tony just…. checks out.

As funny as it is, it makes Tony think of every single romantic relationship that he’s ever had. There are so many signs flashing that none of them seem to be noticing despite several of them claiming to be ‘master profilers and spies’. There is something that Tony’s long since learned, and that’s that it’s never a good thing when the fighting stops when there’s been no changes made. Continued attempts to fix something shows that both parties are still invested in making this work to some point, but that when one just stops trying then that’s a surefire sign that they already have one foot out of the door.

Sometimes, Tony’s learned, it’s not the yelling that foretells the end. It’s the silence.

The team – or ‘family’ because isn’t that how Steve is always trying to portray them most days? – seems to not only not notice the change, they seem to _prefer_ it. Or perhaps they think it’s ‘justifiable guilt’ that Tony should have over his non-existent hand in the Ultron events. Tony figures it’s a kind of willful blindness on their part. He’s not mentioning the nitty gritty details anymore, and he doesn’t argue against the stupid plans they make if they ever actually get around to making a plan and he just lets it be and tries to get in front of the damage.

Pepper, honestly the smartest person alive on the planet, knows what’s going on probably even before he did, having been witness to it enough times over the years. She doesn’t say anything when he starts showing up at each and every single board meeting, or Avengers events or SI events or every random charity he can get an invite to that makes it to where he’s out of the Compound and won’t be back until very late and then gone again bright and early in the morning. This is something he does, after all, this kind of separation in the final days.

Unfortunately, the final days don’t come fast enough and Tony figures he’s still not surprised when Steve decides that his ‘morals and how he thinks the world should work’ trumps the sovereignty of every nation and individual on the planet because he’s a self-proclaimed _good_ _man,_ and ‘but Bucky’ In the end, Tony just watches horrified as Steve calls the others to him like a petulant little feudal lord and drags down bridges and airports and assaults cops and steals government information and weaponry while spitting on Tony’s outstretched hand, and Tony comes to realize that if he wants to save the Avengers that he’s going to have to get Rogers to stop and listen to reason asap.

But then comes the video.

Then comes the _truth_.

…and then comes the exhaustion.

Thirty-eight hours of surgery for the damage done to his body from Siberia is certainly more than enough time to mull over everything insofar as the Avengers are concerned. Adding in Rhodey’s injuries which were thrown in his face by Natasha and Clint and being left to die, choking on his own blood by Rogers and T’Challa is really just kicking a dead dog that’s already down.

Tony sighs and takes a moment, letting all of those choices and missed opportunities wash over him. He closes his eyes, letting himself mourn so much loss and pain before he takes a deep breath, struggling past the weight that falls off slowly but surely; and lets it go. Let’s _them_ go. It’s time to take a different path, and slowly he opens his eyes to the ceiling tiles that he’s counted too many times and he knows what he needs to do.

It’s time to begin again.

It’s time to do it better.

**Author's Note:**

> Please no comments of a critiquing or negative nature. Thank you.


End file.
